Author: Michael Pollick

The group pushing for Maine marijuana legalization Monday said it has collected enough signatures to put the issue on the November 2016 ballot, joining a growing number of states with similar voter initiatives.

The Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol, which backs a bill that would allow adults 21 and older to possess marijuana, said Sunday that it had collected 103,115 signatures in its quest to become the first East Coast state to legalize pot for recreational use, nearly twice the 61,123 valid signatures to qualify for the November ballot.

The group, using the logo Regulate Maine, says it has voter signatures from more than 400 Maine towns signed the petition.

“Over the past eight months, we’ve talked to more than 100,000 voters across the state, from Kittery to Caribou,” said campaign manager David Boyer. “Most Mainers agree it is time to end the failed policy of marijuana prohibition, and they will have the opportunity to do it this November.”

The proposed initiative would allow adults 21 years of age and older to possess up to 2.5 ounces of marijuana and grow a limited number of marijuana plants in their homes. It would also establish the framework for a tightly regulated system of licensed marijuana retail stores, cultivation facilities, product-manufacturing facilities, and testing facilities, and it would create rules governing the cultivation, testing, transportation, and sale of marijuana. The initiative would enact a 10% tax on marijuana sales.

“This initiative will replace the underground marijuana market with a tightly controlled system of legitimate, taxpaying businesses that create good jobs for Maine residents,” Boyer said. “It will also make Maine safer by allowing enforcement officials to spend more time addressing serious crimes instead of enforcing failed marijuana prohibition laws.”

The 2014 midterms saw legalization sweep over more areas of the country, including Oregon, Alaska and Washington D.C.

Many states are following Washington and Colorado’s path, getting closer and closer to legalization every election cycle. So far, legalization advocates have had to rely on voter-backed initiatives to get legislation passed, as the federal government seems as though it still won’t budge on reclassifying cannabis out of its current Schedule 1 status. Local governments across the country have taken baby steps towards ending prohibition, with many cities passing ordinances that either have decriminalized small amounts of marijuana or marked them as a lowest priority for law enforcement officials.

Nevada became the first state to officially acknowledge that adult-use marijuana legalization will be on the November 2016 ballot.

It looks like California and Arizona also will host November ballot initiatives.

A number of groups drew up plans to legalize marijuana in Florida, but they failed to gather the nearly 700,000 signatures required by the deadline, which was the end of January. Even then, Florida law offers no simple voter initiative path. Instead, the only path to legalization other than the legislature is to get voters to ratify a constitutional amendment, which requires a 60 percent favorable vote.

Florida voters will have a chance to say yes or no to a proposed constitutional amendment to create a comprehensive medical marijuana program, now that the group backing that amendment, United For Care, has turned considerably more than the required number of signatures. The medical marijuana proposal will again be called Amendment 2 on the ballot, as it was in 2014, when it won 58 percent of the vote.

Registered medical marijuana patients in Arizona — a state with roughly a third of the population of Florida — consumed more than 19 tons of marijuana last year, according to a report by the Arizona Department of Health Services. That works out to about 40 million joints.

The report provides clues as to how medical marijuana would be consumed in Florida, with a similarly situated pool of retirees but a population of 19.9 million, vs. Arizona’s 6.73 million.

If the average price for marijuana from state-regulated dispensaries is $300 an ounce, it means medical users spent more than $184 million last year acquiring the drug legally, reports the Arizona Daily Star and Tucson.com.

In Arizona, the state reports, there are 77,639 card-holding patients, which works out to 1.15 percent of the population. If the same percentage were to prevail in Florida, the state would have 229,456 registered patients.

That 2010 law allows those with certain specified medical conditions and a doctor’s recommendation to obtain up to 2½ ounces of marijuana every two weeks. Those conditions include glaucoma, seizures, nausea as well as Alzheimer’s disease and post-traumatic stress disorder.

Arizona legalized medical marijuana through a voter initiative in 2010, but the program kicked into a higher gear in 2015, as more growers, processors and retail outlets or dispensaries became established.

In Florida, United for Care confirmed in a Thursday press conference its comprehensive medical marijuana proposal has obtained enough verified signatures to assure that it will be back on the ballot in November of this year as a constitutional amendment.

If ratified by 60 percent of Florida voters, Amendment 2 would enshrine medical marijuana as a right for Florida patients suffering a number of debilitating conditions.

A Florida medical marijuana amendment will be on the ballot again this year, in what is shaping up as another close vote.

“I believe it passes, if the election would be today,” said Florida pollster Doug Kaplan, managing partner of Gravis Marketing. “However, it will be very, very close. It is going get anywhere from 59 percent to 62 percent.”

The marijuana advocacy group United for Care, backed by Orlando plaintiff’s attorney John Morgan, confirmed during a Thursday press conference that the group has collected nearly 700,000 valid petition signatures in time for a Jan. 31 deadline.

“We are talking for the most part about illnesses and injuries who are fighting for their lives,” Morgan told reporters on Thursday. “This is not, ‘Let’s go have fun.’”

In October, 87 percent of registered voters queried by Quinnipiac University said they would support the ability of adults to use medical marijuana if it is prescribed by doctors. Only 12 percent opposed, and only 1 percent were undecided. But as Quinnipiac pollster Peter Brown told the Orlando Sentinel, early polls in 2014 found high levels of support for medical marijuana as well, but that did not translate into willingness to approve a constitutional amendment.

“The strong support among Floridians for legalizing medical marijuana may not be enough. In 2014, voters expressed overwhelming support for legalization, but at the ballot box they failed to meet the 60 percent threshold required by the State Constitution,” Brown said.

The fine-tuned 2016 version of the amendment makes it more clear that felons will not be allowed to become care-givers and that children cannot obtain a marijuana prescription on their own, and that that the measure is meant to help only those with debilitating medical conditions — alleged loopholes pointed out by the opposition in voluminous television commercials through the summer and fall of 2014

To be placed on the ballot, a constitutional amendment requires the signatures of 683,149 registered Florida voters as well as signatures representing 8 percent of the 2012 electorate in at least half of Florida’s 27 congressional districts.

The Division of Elections was reporting Thursday that 692,981 total signatures and 14 congressional districts had qualified.

In addition to the signature requirement, the Florida Supreme Court must opine on the constitutionality of the amendment language, which they did unanimously in a December opinion, United For Care stated.

“This is a tremendous victory for patients and doctors in our state,” said United for Care campaign manager Ben Pollara in a prepared statement. “Amendment 2 will pass this fall and less than a year from today Florida will join 23 other states and the District of Columbia in allowing physicians to recommend marijuana to individuals with debilitating conditions. Every day, doctors prescribe dangerous, addictive, and potentially deadly narcotics to their patients but can’t even suggest the use of marijuana, which has never killed a person in thousands of years of human civilization. Very soon, Florida doctors will finally have that option.”

As the amendment issue heated up in 2014, the Florida legislature passed a highly restrictive CBD-only law in 2014, which allows for oral consumption of a marijuana extract that leaves out almost all of the ingredient associated with getting high. It is still possible that this 2014 law will be extended by legislators to include full-strength marijuana for terminally ill patients.

However, medical marijuana supporters are pushing hard to see a broader whole-plant medical marijuana program become law this year.

This time around, qualifying conditions would include PTSD, making the legalization measure of value to a large cohort of individuals including veterans of foreign wars.

Here is the exact language voters will consider on the medical conditions to be covered in Florida:

“Debilitating Medical Condition” means cancer, epilepsy, glaucoma, positive status for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS), post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), Crohn’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis, or other debilitating medical conditions of the same kind or class as or comparable to those enumerated, and for which a physician believes that the medical use of marijuana would likely outweigh the potential health risks for a patient.”

Medical marijuana, which came close to becoming a Florida constitutional amendment in November 2014, has made it onto the Florida ballot again this year.

A less restrictive version of the proposed amendment won just short of the required 60 percent of the vote in November 2014, and looks like a cliff-hanger this time around as well.

“I believe it passes if the election would be today,” said Florida pollster Doug Kaplan, managing partner of Gravis Marketing. “However, it will be very, very close. It is going get anywhere from 59 percent to 62 percent.”

The marijuana advocacy group United for Care, backed by Orlando plaintiff’s attorney John Morgan, confirmed during a Thursday press conference that the group has collected nearly 700,000 valid petition signatures in time for a Jan. 31 deadline.

Marijuana use among adults 26 and older in Oregon has doubled since 2006, while at the same time use has gone up only slightly in the rest of the country, reports Noelle Crombie at The Oregonian.

Overall, 1 in 10 adults in Oregon said they use the drug, which remains especially popular with young men. Oregon’s marijuana use among adults has exceeded national trends for the past decade.

The Oregon Health Authority this month issued a report detailing marijuana trends and attitudes among Oregonians. It is the state’s first comprehensive review of the latest government public health surveys looking at who consumes marijuana in Oregon and how frequently, as well as attitudes about cannabis, which is now legal for recreational use.

The medical marijuana company Vireo Health is following two sets of regulations as it prepares to begin selling its products in New York state next month: an 18-month-old state law, and the considerably older edicts of the Torah, reports the Albany Times Union newspaper.

Vireo announced this week that it has received kosher certification from the Orthodox Union, one of the world’s pre-eminent gatekeepers of what is certified as kosher and what isn’t. The group’s trademark OU symbol will appear on Vireo’s vaporization cartridges, oils and capsules.

The applicability of the kosher certification remains to be seen. The state’s regulations do not include any rules about following religious customs. And it’s unclear how many potential medical marijuana patients — bearing in mind that the state program is rather restrictive — keep kosher. But it is a fact that New York is home to the largest Jewish community (between 1 million and 2 million people) in the United States.

SARASOTA — A bill that could keep Florida marijuana users out of the criminal justice system is making its way through the Florida legislative system, law enforcement officials learned Tuesday at a law-and-order conference held in Sarasota by the Florida Smart Justice Alliance.

The “Prearrest Diversion Programs” bill (SB 618), won unanimous approval in the Senate Criminal Justice committee in November and appears likely to gain a committee hearing in the House, says Rep. Ray Pilon, R-Sarasota, who in 2011 championed a similar successful law to curb arrests of first-time juvenile offenders.

If it became Florida law, the bill would give police officers the option of treating certain minor offenses as civil violations rather than criminal ones, avoiding the criminal proceedings that start with a probable cause affidavit, take a defendant to court, and leave him or her with a criminal record whether or not they are incarcerated.

While it is more comprehensive and includes counseling and drug treatment programs, the “diversion program” is in some ways parallel to county ordinances enacted by Miami/Dade county and then by Broward County this year that give officers the discretion to go with fines instead of an arrest for minor violations. This year, both jurisdictions gave police officers the discretion to issue a civil citation, not much different from a parking ticket, to someone stopped for possession of 20 grams or less of marijuana.

Misdemeanor offenses under the proposed state law would include a similar marijuana charge, non-domestic assault, shoplifting or other forms of petty theft, possession of alcohol by a person younger than 21, selling alcohol to a minor, or trespassing.

The statewide measure “is a lot better than going to court, and it is limited to that first offense,” Pilon said.
The bill, the Smart Justice Alliance and the conference are largely the creations of Tallahassee lobbyist Barney Bishop.

During his tenure as chief of Associated Industries of Florida, the powerful trade association formed the Florida Smart Justice Council. Business leaders active in the trade group recognized that the state’s approach to criminal justice was costing to much, without effectively reducing recidivism, according to the Smart Justice Alliance website.

While the average re-arrest rate in the state is 40-50 percent, only 6 percent of those who successfully complete the civil citation program in Leon County get re-arrested, according to forum panelist Greg Frost, president of the Civil Citation Network.

“This is a program that could truly change the criminal justice system at the front end,” Frost said.

The policeman who would be making the arrest uses his or her judgment to decide whether offer the civil option to an individual who has been apprehended. Agreeing to the option means the offender is going to get a drug test.

In Leon County, as in the proposed state program, the offender must agree up front to participate in the program, which could mean simply taking an online course and completing some community service, but could also mean entering a drug treatment program if his evaluation points in that direction. Individuals who enter a treatment program would have to pay $350 to do so. Fifty dollars of that would be saved up to help pay for individuals who could not afford treatment.

Two separate Florida efforts to legalize use of marijuana by adults in 2016 confirmed this week that they are refocusing their efforts on 2018.

That leaves the United For Care medical marijuana initiative as the only 2016 shot at legalizing cannabis in the state, other than the Florida legislature, which is likely to take very limited action, if any.

The group behind “Regulate Florida” this week called off its effort to get on the 2016 ballot, with a promise to come back with an edited version of its proposal in March, aimed at 2018 voters.

Meanwhile, Melbourne-based Floridians for Freedom will continue to gather signatures for its current proposal, which needs no tweaks to work in 2018.

“We realized going into this that there are an awful lot of challenges trying to do grass-roots,” said Jodi James, chairperson of Melbourne-based Floridians for Freedom. She added that the same signatures being collected now will be valid for two years, giving the group a second shot in 2018 as long as it collects the nearly 700,000 verified signatures that are required by August of 2017.

The two legalization petitions are quite different. Regulate Florida’s proposal is highly detailed and includes a regulatory structure. But it includes specific date references to 2017 that become obsolete when shooting for a 2018 vote.

The Floridians for Freedom petition is very short and leaves regulation to the state and local authorities.

The deadline for getting 683,149 verified voter signatures onto petitions and into the state’s hands is Feb. 1, which neither group can meet.

“None of us will have enough petitions except United for Care to get on the ballot for 2016,” said Karen Goldstein, one of the leaders of the Regulate Florida group and president of the Florida Chapter of NORML (National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws).

At the same time, she is optimistic about Regulate Florida’s chances for passage in 2018.

“We have a pretty good commitment for funding for 2018,” Goldstein said. “We have established a wonderful network, with terrific volunteers. So when we get this funding for 2018, with what we already have set up, we will come out of the gate with an effective campaign.”

When the Regulate Florida proposal was first unveiled in August, cannabis consultant Kris Krane said he was concerned whether cannabis reform activists would have enough money to go around. On top of the four states that have already legalized adult use of cannabis, Krane told the Herald Tribune he expected as many as five more to try in 2016: California, Arizona, Nevada, Massachusetts and Maine.

“They’re going to need $10 million if they are going to do this right in Florida,” Krane said.

Even after getting on the ballot, a proposed constitutional amendment must be approved by 60 percent of the voters to be ratified. United for Care came close with its 2014 proposed medical marijuana amendment, winning the approval of 58 percent of those who voted.

In the legislature, the only bill so far that is showing the ability to get through committees is one that would amend the non-euphoric cannabis act of 2014. The amendment would allow the same five grower-processors just named by the state to grow full-strength marijuana for terminally ill patients with a life expectancy of a year or less.

WASHINGTON — Checking whether drivers are impaired by marijuana and studying the feasibility of roadside marijuana checks are written into the fine print on a massive transportation bill that will be law by the end of the week.

The five-year bill will provide $300 billion in spending on traditional transportation projects, providing “long-term certainty for states and local governments” as well as “improvements to the programs that sustain our roads, bridges, and passenger rail system,” the Republican and Democratic lawmakers who drafted the legislation said.

House and Senate negotiators agreed to the final bill Tuesday, and passage is expected by the end of the week.

The bill requires the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to study and report to Congress on whether it’s feasible to establish a threshold for marijuana-impaired driving much like the limit on alcohol in the bloodstream for drunken driving, adds The Denver Post.

The agency is also to assess methods for a roadside marijuana check much like the breathalyzer test for alcohol.

Meanwhile, potential vendors for those roadside cannabis tests are sprucing up their offerings.

An Oakland company working with scientists from the University of California at Berkeley is claiming a breakthrough in the race to develop an instant roadside marijuana breathalyzer, Fortune magazine reports this week.

Hound Labs Inc., whose device is also uniquely designed to double up as an alcohol breathalyzer, is among a handful of companies and researchers hoping to capitalize on increasingly relaxed marijuana laws in the United States.

Hound Labs claims it had found an accurate way to measure THC – the psychoactive component in cannabis – within one or two blows. The portable device is designed to help determine if a driver is impaired from recent marijuana use.

The idea is to replace a complicated assortment of costly blood and urine tests that can take days to get a result and cannot distinguish between recent and chronic use.

While 23 states have eased access to marijuana for medical use and four, plus Washington, D.C., allow recreational use, cannabis remains prohibited under federal law.

New Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has also promised to legalize marijuana for recreational use.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said earlier this year that while cannabis impairs psychomotor skills and cognitive function, not enough is known about how much is needed to affect driving performance.

Some states are not waiting to reach a consensus on how much THC is too much to drive.

Washington and Montana have set a limit of 5 nanograms/milliliter (ng/mL), while Pennsylvania has a 1 ng/mL limit.

“Right now the standards are completely arbitrary. I would argue that they are useless,” Hound Labs Chief Executive Mike Lynn told Reuters, noting that existing tests cannot determine whether a person smoked an hour ago or 12 days earlier.

While Hound Labs’ device, is designed to accurately measure THC levels from smoked pot, it cannot provide evidence of impairment by itself.

“Our ability to measure THC in breath really should shift the national dialogue from one about simply detecting if THC is in someone’s body to a conversation where standards can be developed that reflect actual impairment,” said Lynn.

Hound Labs hopes to have its product ready by the end of next year and wil price it at about $1,000, in line with the average alcohol breathalyzer.

A sample of Minnesota Medical Solutions marijuana pills. The company was one of two manufacturers selected by Minnesota to grow and cultivate marijuana for the state’s new medical cannabis program. (Kyle Potter, AP)

Less than six months after starting its medical marijuana program, the state of Minnesota is adding intractable pain as a qualifying medical condition.

The politics of the situation bear watching in Florida, where the legislature is likely to at least consider various medical marijuana schemes starting in February, and where voters are likely to face their own decision on a proposed constitutional amendment that would give sick residents access to medical marijuana even if the legislature fails to act.

In making the announcement, Commissioner Ehlinger acknowledged a range of views on the issue as well as the difficulty of making a public health decision without the benefit of an abundance of solid, scientific evidence about benefits and risks.

“The relative scarcity of firm evidence made this a difficult decision,” Commissioner Ehlinger said. “However, given the strong medical focus of Minnesota’s medical cannabis program and the compelling testimony of hundreds of Minnesotans, it became clear that the right and compassionate choice was to add intractable pain to the program’s list of qualifying conditions. This gives new options for clinicians and new hope for suffering patients.”

When the 2014 Minnesota Legislature passed the law creating Minnesota’s medical cannabis program, it included a set of nine health conditions that would qualify a person to receive medical cannabis.

Severe and persistent muscle spasms, including
those characteristic of Multiple Sclerosis.

Crohn’s Disease.

Terminal illness, with a probable life expectancy of less
than one year.

The 2014 law tasked the health commissioner with evaluating what conditions to add, and required that the first of the conditions to be considered was intractable pain.

The 2014 law defines intractable pain as a condition “in which the cause of the pain cannot be removed or otherwise treated with the consent of the patient and in which, in the generally accepted course of medical practice, no relief or cure of the cause of the pain is possible, or none has been found after reasonable efforts.”

Under current law, patients certified as having intractable pain will be eligible to receive medical cannabis from the state’s two medical cannabis manufacturers on August 1, 2016. As with the program’s other qualifying conditions, patients seeking medical cannabis to treat intractable pain will need advance certification from a Minnesota health care provider. More information on the program’s certification process is available on the MDH website at Medical Cannabis: Intractable Pain.